In this article, we inquire the merits of criminalizing blasphemy. We argue that religious views do not warrant a separate treatment compared to nonreligious ones. In addition, freedom of speech must be balanced against the interest of those who may be aggrieved by blasphemous remarks. We conclude that penalizing blasphemy is undesirable. It is fortunate, in that light, that acts of blasphemy have recently been decriminalized in The Netherlands by removing blasphemy as an offense from the Criminal Code. Still, other provisions appear to leave enough room to reach the same result, making the removal a possibly virtually aesthetic change. In the international context, it would be regrettable for The Netherlands to forgo the opportunity to take a leading role.

In this article I reconstruct the contribution of some central Hellenistic political thinkers to a theory of human rights. Starting point is the traditional Stoic conception of the law of nature as a power in which only perfect human beings actively participate. In the 2^nd century BC the Stoic Panaetius adjusted this traditional high-minded theory by also allowing for a lower level of human excellence. This second-rate human excellence can be achieved just by following ‘proper functions’, which are derived from ordinary human nature and can be laid down in rules. From here, it was only a small, yet decisive step – presumably to be attributed to one of Cicero’s teachers – to discard the highest level of human perfection altogether. This step, I argue, paved the way for an understanding of the rules of natural law in terms of human rights.

The legal scholars Paul Scholten (1875-1946) and Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) had much in common. The most significant agreement is their emphasis on the influence of a (religious) worldview on legal scholarship and practice. Unfortunately, they never met to discuss the similarities and differences of their jurisprudential ideas. In this article I try to reconstruct this conversation which never took place. Scholten’s legal thought is specifically oriented to the practice and difficulties of judging. Dooyeweerd above all was a philosopher whose specific philosophy of the modal aspects of reality is the basis for his thinking about the law. Both scholars emphasized the importance of legal principles. They also identified several fundamental legal categories and concepts. However, their methodology is different. The way religion and morality influence their legal thought is also different. A discussion of the contemporary relevance of their work completes the paper.